Use of various methods to get better sense of strategic competitive advantage over

competitors:
Value chain focuses on various business activities and its contributions to create the
customer value. It helps organization to find out its strengths and weaknesses as the business of
the company is viewed as a process. Value chain analysis helps to identify the various chains of
activities that are carried out by the business and help the company to get the most cost effective
and value added chain of activities to gain competitive advantage by the company.
Resource Based view analyze various resources with distinct combination and helps to
identify the strategic advantage for the firm over other firms. Every firm is different in
fundamental ways as different firm has a unique bundle of resources. The bundles of resources
are the combination of various tangible and intangible assets and the capabilities of the company
to make effective uses of those various assets.
Three circles analysis helps to find out what a customer really wants, what can company
offer to fulfill that want and what a key competitor is offering to customer to meet that wants. It
is the technique that examines the needs of the customers, company offerings and competitor's
offerings to more clearly articulate what their company's competitive advantage is and how it
differs from those of the competitors (Pearce II & Robinson, 2015).
Product life cycle refers to the analysis of the series of stages of the life cycle of a product
from the development, introduction to growth, maturity and decline of the product. It helps the
company to identify the various factors that are affecting the product life cycle and develop
strategies how to keep the product in growing stage and earn profit at its maximum level.

SWOT helps managers to make the strategies to deal with both internal as well as
external environment. It helps to give brief overview to its strength, weakness, opportunities and
threat and create the strategies considering those factors. Strategies are made to overcome those
weakness and threats considering the companys strength and take the opportunities from the
market. The common use of SWOT analysis is a logical framework guiding discussion and
reflection about the situation of the firm and basic alternatives (Pearce II & Robinson, 2015).
This helps managers to make quality strategic decisions.
References
Pearce II, J. A., & Robinson, R. B. (2015). Strategic Management: Planning for Domestic and
Global Competition (14th ed.). (pp. 151-184). New York: McGraw-Hill Education.